• OBITS

    You read the obituaries every day not only for the confirmation that you are not listed among them. The key five words there are not only for the affirmation, particularly upon hearing the gentle man you liked, but you also valued as a friend and craftsman is gone, and you didn’t say goodbye, that you…


  • THE WEIGHT

    There is a heaviness to the sky a weightiness belied by the gray of the clouds, even the departing sun seems to whisper that it will be replaced by rain in short order. You feel the weight bearing down, as the heat of the day dissipates, and although the first drops have not yet fallen,…


  • A TURN

    He is never certain what to do on days like this one, when the winter takes a particularly nasty turn, the temperature hovers at utter emptiness, and the wind elects to try to enfold everything it can reach in a coat of frost, that bleaches life away. He walks each day, through the nearby park…


  • WALKING

    Today was downright exhausting, and my hour long walk along the river left me dripping and drooping. It wasn’t different than most days, same time, same place, and the usual 756 miles, according to my old friend Orion, who was watching from his usual perch, unseen, as he prefers it by day. When I was…


  • DEPARTURE

    It is that magical hour of the day when the sun sets the pond’s surface ablaze. The fountain in the middle shoots drops of liquid fire into to sky, only to watch them return to their now fiery home. This magic only lasts a few moments before the water returns to its natural state, and…


  • OF DREAMS

    In our small world night and day are separated by dreams that escape just beyond our consciousness. We search for deeper meaning even as we are certain they will leave us as they have long before we could remember. That is the trouble with margins, they ebb and flow without warning, their arrivals and departures…


  • DIEM

    Slipping away into the night the absence isn’t noticeable and by the time you discover the disappearance, it is too late, and there is nothing at all that can be done, so you move onto the next thing and the thing after that, and memory will fade slowly, until none is left. If it was…


  • AFLOAT

      Dreams are the gentle sea across which we float as night embraces us. This is the preferred view, but in the stormy dark our dreams turn violent tossing us against thoughts we have long suppressed. It is how we row, how we ride he swells, searching for the calm on the horizon that allows…


  • WALKING THE WIRE

    There is a precarious balance we spend much of life attempting to maintain. It is like the invisible border between day and night dream and forgetting and we walk the wire along the precipice awaiting the arrival of the sun so that we can bid farewell to the dark places in which our dreams hide.


  • YAKUSAN’S BIRTH OF A CALF

    In the middle of the day you can not see because the sun is too bright and may blind you. At midnight you stumble searching for light for you are blind in the darkness. What is it you struggle so hard to see? A reflection on case 66 of the Shobogenzo (Dogen’s True Dharma Eye)